Denial as Defence: Time to Acknowledge Flaws in Auckland’s Unitary Plan

Evidence mounts, resistance increases

Yet another research project has reminded us what the majority of Aucklanders already know.  Most of them want to live in suburbs, and prefer detached to multi-unit dwellings.  Yet the Auckland Council – or at least the majority of councillors and their planners – apparently remains in denial.  Through the Auckland Plan and now the Unitary Plan the Council continues to elevate higher density dwelling in and around town centres, the CBD, and arterial roads as the principal response to Auckland's growth potential and to a longstanding and growing housing crisis confronting the city.

But the evidence is mounting that it is not an appropriate plan for accommodating growth and maintaining Auckland’s liveability on either economic or environmental grounds.  And the signs that Aucklanders will resist the plan are mounting, even as the Council aims to rush it through with limited consultation and even more limited evidence.

Who are we planning for?

This left me wondering just who will occupy the medium- to high-density residential precincts planned to shape our future. To get an insight into this I went back to the 2006 Census to find out who lived in the inner city in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.[1] 

I looked at a number of indicators for the inner suburbs, and compared them with the same statistics for the respective regions (which include their peri-urban catchments, additional urban areas in Wellington, and towns in Canterbury). 

The results are displayed in the various graphs at the end of this blog. Take a look. 

The evidence is compelling.  Inner city dwellers tend to be in rental accommodation, they are generally younger – with a marked absence of families – they are less likely to be currently married or in a civil union, they haven’t been at their current address very long, and are likely to have moved in from other parts of New Zealand and overseas. 

Central Auckland residents –passing through

This pattern prevails in each of the three inner city areas considered to a greater or lesser extent.  But it looks most pronounced in Auckland, so I delved a little deeper there.  The table tells the story: inner Auckland by no means represents Auckland or Aucklanders.

Inner Auckland – an area in which small, often multi-unit dwellings tend to prevail – is where people appear to touch down briefly, not where they settle.  They come from elsewhere, and do not stay for long.  They are predominantly young adults, a significant share being students.  Older people are not necessarily attracted to the smaller units of inner city living – something we looked at in an earlier post.  Most residents in inner Auckland are not in permanent relationships.  And the people who are tend to be are couples without children. 

So where is the evidence that suggests that the plan will be widely accepted?

If this is the sort of profile we might relate to inner city and multi-unit living (apartments, terraces, and the like) the Auckland plan could be on shaky ground. It may well be shaped around the residential preferences of a distinct (and diminishing) minority: younger, transitional and transient people and households. 

Of course, the data is dated, and there has been a pretty intensive PR effort by the council and its supporters to push a plan telling us that we ard ready to make the shift to higher density.  But surely such a push should be based on evidence that suggests many more people are prepared to accept a radical change in the lifestyles that typified Auckland in the recent past?  And while the evidence cited here against the plan is a little dated, I have seen none that suggests tastes and behaviours have changed that much.

So we are left with a radical shift in the way we think about and live in Auckland, apparently founded on little more than supposition and dogma.

More evidence is around the corner

Perhaps we should seek a stay in play at least until the 2013 census results become available later this year and early next.  Maybe they will show the sort of shift that might increase the credibility for the plan. Either way, it makes sense to actually wait and see, if for no other reason than what the most recent data tells us about the housing market and residents' preferences is bound to be brought to bear as communities dig in to resist it. 

And no need to hold up the main task

And with a more relaxed (and realistic) timetable for the Unitary Plan, the Council could push ahead in a more focused way with a series of changes under currently operative plans – or even in partnership with central government through special legislation – to address the city’s housing crisis.  And it could do that without getting caught up in the growing debate over a plan that at the moment is not standing up well to community (and perhaps even government) scrutiny.

---

[1]         Including the following Census area Units:

Auckland: Central West, Freemans Bay, Central East, Newton, Grafton West, Grafton East

Wellington: Lambton, Willis Street-Cambridge Tce, Thorndon-Tinakori Rd, Aro St-Nairn St, Mt Cook-Wallace St, Mt Victoria West

Christchurch: Cathedral Square, Hagley Park, Avon Loop, Mona Vale, Riccarton West, Riccarton, Riccarton Sth, Merivale, St Albans West, St Albans East, Edgeware

 

 The Inner City is Different ....

 

 Note: Married includes civil unions

 



 

 

 

 

Terms of Engagement: councils and their communities

Failures of local governance – the case of Canterbury

Christchurch City and Canterbury Region have suffered not just blows of nature.  They have also been suffering ruptures of governance. 

Recent protests against the Christchurch City Council, the appointment of a “minder” to oversee its activities, the establishments of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority by government to take over reconstruction of the city, and before that replacement of elected regional councillors by government-appointed commissioners all raise questions over the effectiveness of democratic governance.  

In the case of the city, the problem has been a seeming inability to respond effectively to the difficult but urgent issues of recovery and rebuilding after the earthquakes.  In the case of the region, the problem lay in an apparent inability to resolve contentious water resource management issues. 

Bigger as better: restructuring Auckland

An assumption of inadequate governance was also the cornerstone of the inquiry by a Royal Commission into how Auckland might better play a role as the economic driver of the nation.  The assumption was made that amalgamation - a structural response - would deliver governance and management improvements.

The  hoped-for administrative or technical efficiency gains pale against the prospect of better – or worse – decisions as a result of collapsing eight councils into one.  How much money might be saved on computer systems, for example, or consolidating staff is largely irrelevant if the quality of decisions about where, why and how public resources are allocated does not improve.

And it’s the quality of the big decisions that lies at the heart of good governance.  This underpins the significance of Auckland's proposed spatial plan (and why I am so worried about it).

Governance and democracy

Governance refers to the capacity to make decisions on behalf of an organisation.   The Oxford English Dictionary gets to the nub: governance is “ruling with authority”.  In democratic institutions that authority is conferred on their representatives by the citizens.   

Things go wrong when the governors forget that they are there to make decisions in the interests of the entire polity (or company, NGO, or agency in the case of corporate governance).  They are not there to push a particular viewpoint on the assumption that they know best because they got the most votes. 

That’s especially so in local government where multiple candidates and low voter turnout mean people frequently get elected by small numbers.  Despite the undue influence of minorities on electoral results, the mandate to govern locally still reflects a responsibility to act beyond the interests of any particular group. 

The alternatives – (1) governing by decree

Contrast this with dictatorships or monarchies, where authority to govern lies in military and subversive powers or arcane traditions, with governance typically benefiting only narrowly defined groups and unconstrained by popular accountabiity.

If elected politicians do privilege particular interest groups the quality of decisions is undermined (by a failure to reflect on all the options) along with the legitimacy of their authority.  (There may, of course, be a place in a constitution for regard to be had to the claims of particular groups.  In New Zealand the Treaty of Waitangi plays this role for Maori).

The alternatives – (2) governing by expertise

Good decision-making may be informed by the deliberations of experts.  But allowing technicians to prevail across decision-making is also the way of autocracy, dictatorship by another name.  The cult of the expert ultimately limits individual freedoms.  This appears to be a path that Italy and Greece have adopted after years of apparently deficient democratic governance, but it is a response to crisis, and unlikely to endure. 

In the long run playing to technical expertise to legitimate decisions contrary to community preferences limits democracy.  And it won't lead to good outcomes when implementation encounters community resistance.

The importance of transparency

Communities are hardly homogeneous.  Diversity and division, competition and complexity are attributes of society underplayed in both text books and rule books.  Resource allocation decisions almost invariably favour some groups over others.  That's why transparency is critical to good governance.  Understanding why decisions are made is a big step on the path to accepting their consequences.

People have the right to know the grounds on which decisions likely to affect claims on and access to public resources are made.  More than that they have the right to (seek to) influence them.  That’s where the terms of engagement between governors and governed come into play. 

Beyond the ballot box

There has been plenty written about how councils might engage with their communities.  I want to promote three principles here:

(1)    Engagement can take many forms, each with advantages and disadvantages.  Good engagement will draw across the full range.  Beyond the ballot box it is important not to be captured by any particular programme of consultation.  Politicians can engage with constituents informally and formally on a daily basis and in a number of ways.  Surveys and submissions, protests and petitions all play their part. 

(2)    Smaller structures are likely to be more open to engagement than large structures.  Fewer tiers of management mean that messages about delivery and performance, the feedback needed to inform decisions, have a better chance of getting onto the political agenda.  And smaller councils lift the presence and accessibility of decision-makers generally, keeping the channels open and boosting accountability.

(3)    Decentralised structures are likely to enhance engagement because they tap directly into the diversity of the community. 

Moderation by management

Information from the community is varied in content and credibility, especially in the age of the internet but, allowing for the occasional “idiot factor”, it cannot be taken lightly.  This is where council management has a role to play.  Too much or conflicting information just becomes noise, making it easy for politicians to shut it out and leading to decisions based on partial information at best and preconceived views at worst.  Or else they end up caught up in conflicting information currents, and go nowhere.

Management may moderate (not mediate) the flow of information to the governors.  So managers also need to be close to the community (another argument for moderation in the size of councils).  Their role is not to shape the information councillors receive, but to relate it to the issues at hand and, where necessary, to the interests of the wider community.

Community rules

There is clearly more to making the big decisions than simply listening to the community.  There are financial, managerial, and institutional limits on what councils can do.  And the views of experts about what’s possible and what’s feasible do need to be considered.  But management constraints and expert opinion are just two of the three legs of the decision-making stool.  Community engagement is the third. 

And as councils are beginning to discover, councils that become remote from their communities are on a hiding to nowhere.   Engagement is not just about going through the motions of listening.  If citizens are not heard even apparently logical decisions will come undone and, eventually, councils will come undone with them.

Living in the city – the path to CBD redemption?

A tale of two city centres

Auckland and Christchurch councils see housing playing a much greater role in the central city.  They have released plans for transformation (or bits of a plan in Auckland’s case), both with visions of more active, exciting, and greener central cities.  Auckland is already on its way, with the recent extension of public waterfront amenities into the Wynyard Quarter.

For Christchurch, the path is more difficult but the council’s vision for the CBD following the devastation of repeated earthquakes over the past year is a bold one: increasing green spaces in a low-medium rise centre, an ambitious combination of restoration and remembrance, public spaces, public transport, and a revival of inner city retailing and housing.  It is an ambitious blueprint for creating certainty from chaos.

Common hopes

Both cities share a hope that the redemption of downtown will be sustained by an influx of city dwellers, people trading off the space of the suburbs for the buzz of the centre. 

Will it work?  I am not sure.  The quest to revive the CBD by relying on expanding residential precincts within what are already quite confined spaces raises conflicts between accommodating residents' needs and catering 24/7 for many more visitors and a wider variety of educational, entertainment, recreational, professional, and employment activities. 

In any case, the plans appear founded on a vision of place more than people: views of structures, precincts, and building controls define them, rather than consideration of dwelling needs and lifestyle preferences.  Where are the people (other than as stylised figures in rose-tinted renderings)? 

Even though the rhetoric is strong on getting people there (although preferably not by car) little attention seems to have been paid to who will live in expanded central dwelling precincts, how they might live, and what their housing and neighbourhood needs might be.

False expectations

Recent experience suggests that land purchase and aggregation, remediation, and redevelopment, and building costs mean affordability will only be achieved by sacrificing amenity and quality.  This in turn implies that inner city residential development will continue to displace the less well-off, with gentrification leaving no room for the sort of social housing envisaged in the Christchurch mix. 

At least Christchurch central does not lend itself to the shoebox blocks that have become part of inner Auckland’s apartment scene over the past decade.  On the other had, more of the same may be the only real hope of squeezing in the inner city resident numbers Auckland Council hopes for. Either way, it is questionable just how many more young, unattached professionals and students there will be to occupy large numbers of additional medium-density dwellings in either city.

This is one of the questions considered in a report by CityScope Consultants just published on the website of the now discontinued Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand.   It examines the international evidence, looks at the numbers, and reports primary research (interviews with buyers and residents) to identify what might make medium density housing more attractive. (By medium density we mean anything from single storey units, through low rise apartments of 2-3 storeys, to medium-high rise apartment blocks – all of which involve a significant shift from New Zealand’s suburban tradition).

Here are some of the relevant findings:

Extracts from Key Points

It is important to understand the nature of ... demand ... as adoption of medium density housing has not matched expectations.  This may reflect:

• The limited market for centralised, multi-medium density housing;
• A mismatch between where plans are directing housing and where the market lies;
• Supply difficulties with recent development that feed negative market perceptions.

...  New Zealanders’ long-standing cultural preference for detached housing on individual sections has been reinforced by the leaky homes episode and failures in the developer driven, retail investor apartment market.  People see medium density housing as inferior: characterless, drab, monotonous, cramped, leaky, subject to the complications of bodies corporate, lacking privacy, noisy, insecure, lacking an outlook, lacking hobby and storage space, having parking problems, not allowing pets, and with poor prospects for capital gains. 

...

Changing tastes and experience could lift long-term acceptability of residential intensification ... The influences on choice can be organised across three levels spatial resolution:

• accessibility to activities at the city or sector-wide level, including how easy it is to get to jobs, higher order services and retailing, formal recreation and cultural activities, and the like.  In some respects this can be treated as a necessary condition, although the level of accessibility required will vary according to household characteristics;
• domain, which encompasses the area over which day-to-day social relations are formed and regular or lower order transactions take place. This corresponds broadly with suburb or neighbourhood, and may include elements of the medium density complex itself; and
• sanctuary, which refers to the dwelling, and may be influenced by the relationship of the dwelling to the complex and the immediate neighbourhood.

The must-have parameters people look for in their sanctuary are much the same in medium density as in conventional housing: a safe and secure environment, privacy; space, light, and warmth; and flexibility in how it may be used;

...

Domain preferences are influenced by lifestage:

• Younger people (usually in non-family households) at the beginning of their working careers, housing ladder, and relationships tend to favour central city locations;
• Young families tend to favour familiar neighbourhoods;
• Family households tend to favour suburbs and town centres ...;
• Older families and post-family households tend to remain in their established neighbourhoods ...

The resolution of preferences around sanctuary and domain will influence where and what style of housing is generally favoured according to lifestage segment, with the actual choice conditioned by limits of affordability and usually confined to geographic submarkets.  ..

...  future demand for new housing will be driven increasingly by the preferences of empty nester and retirement households, many of whom own their dwellings.  This gives them the capacity to purchase well-appointed medium density housing that satisfies their expectations for domain and sanctuary.  They are less likely to favour small, centralised apartments than younger households and are more likely to have a commitment to particular residential submarkets, built on a stronger sense of domain.

Consequently, residential intensification is more likely to be achieved with plans allowing for diversity of locality and form.  This, in turn, means meeting supply challenges in suburban environments ...

Source: CityScope Consultants (2011) Improving the Design, Quality and Affordability of Residential Intensification in New Zealand, Centre for Housing Research Aotearoa New Zealand, Wellington

Putting future housing in its place
Meeting residential needs, achieving higher residential densities, and restoring the CBD are not objectives that necessarily converge.  A liveable city calls for an emphasis on where most people will be living – the suburbs.  Meeting housing needs and demand will not be achieved by building undifferentiated, small footprint apartments in the centre for what is essentially a minority, transitional and diminishing market segment. 

Equally, reviving the central city will not happen as a result of creating more swathes of medium density housing, and nor should it depend on such a strategy.

It is likely that residential densities will increase in mature cities over the next thirty years naturally: just don’t expect this to favour the CBD.  Certainly the central city has an exciting future as a place to visit.  Let’s not rely too much, though, on getting a lot more people to live there, especially not in medium rise apartments.

After the quake: old new town solution for new overspill problem

Post war London, England → 1970s Canterbury, New Zealand?
In 1974 central planners came up with the idea that development of the small rural service centre, Rolleston, 25km from the CBD, as a “new town” would help accommodate the growth of Christchurch City.  Not long living in the UK at the time, I had looked closely at the new towns north and east of London and argued that the initiative was unjustified.

The post-war new towns in South East England were intended to take up some of the growth pressures on London, containing its expansion and relieving the highly stressed housing situation in the capital.  The new towns were intended to cater for London's overspill, but to be as self-sufficient in employment terms as possible.  There was also a commitment to a “mixed social class”, a reaction against the social problems associated with large, undifferentiated working class housing estates in London.  [1]

The new towns were built around long-standing garden city principles, but to a young kiwi did not appear particularly attractive.  To my mind, it made little sense to transfer the concept to Christchurch, with its more modest growth and scale, different housing and lifestyles, wide open spaces, mountain vistas, and ready access to the coast.  

Rolleston Vistas
(Images, Steve Busson)

It was already committed through various planning documents to moderating growth on the edges.  In the Port Hills there is a natural green buffer to the south while the Waimakariri River flood plain forms a natural boundary to the north. 

Rolleston new town was a solution in search of a problem.  It did not go ahead. 

But that was then

It did not stop Rolleston growing in its own right, especially over the past fifteen years, nor the other rural towns of Canterbury.  Consequently the districts surrounding Christchurch City, Waimakariri and Selwyn, have been among the country’s fastest growing in recent times, a reflection of the attraction of their small towns for people seeking an affordable lifestyle, a sense of community, and the convenience of proximity to Christchurch City.

Perhaps now is the time to revisit the idea of coordinated growth focused on these small settlements close to Christchurch, or even in greenfield sites that offer better prospects of geological stability than the city’s ruptured and traumatised eastern suburbs.

Can east move west?
Any such solution cannot be simply mandated and imposed on the suffering communities east of the Christchurch CBD today: if people displaced by the earthquakes of the past nine months are to stay in and around the city, they need to have a say in where and what sort of community they might move to.  The sort of wholesale dislocation they face may require the powers and capacity of central government to initiate and facilitate solutions, but the community has to be central to any relocation exercise.  And perhaps whole community solutions are required, not sot hat they prevent individuals from taking their own measures, but which enable communities to work together to find solutions that they may share. 

What I am suggesting is the transfer of communities -- groups of households -- into the 21st century equivalent of the new town west of Christchurch.

The institutional framework may have be revamped for the purpose – the Earthquake Commission, the insurance companies, government agencies, even the banks working together to best discharge their individual and joint liabilities and responsibilities; while the people and professionals work together to shape the city of the future.  There may be an opportunity to work together to create an affordable and very liveable alternative.

The township alternative
I have already suggested that Christchurch’s best shot may be decentralised intensification, suburbs focused on human scale community centres, linked by wide avenues or boulevards.  Add to this mix subtly worked new towns or villages, not of the scale of a Crawley, Basildon, or Stevenage in southeast England, but something fitting the Canterbury landscape and Christchurch people. 

Such developments bring with them real lifestyle advantages in an attractive physical setting.   This is what the similarly attractive shire of Margaret River in Western Australia is doing with its town site and rural hamlet strategies; establishing a human scale, low impact alternative to extensive urbanisation in a popular growth area.  It is doing this, interestingly, with the help of Auckland-based Common Ground urban designers.

Tying it together the Curitiba way
We can add to this vision.  Away from the eastern suburbs the garden city survives around its avenues, as attractive as ever.  Its suburban and town centres are likely to play a bigger role, though, with employment and retailing potentially dispersed throughout the city even more in the future than in the past.

That is not to detract from the CBD.  Christchurch has a commitment to rebuilding its CBD as the heart of the region.  This may be in a moderate density, medium-rise manner (and let’s face it, high rise building in Christchurch has been the exception in the past, and will be a lot harder to justify in the future). 

What we will have to think about, though, is how to tie the CBD back to more self-sufficient neighbourhoods, and to growing satellite villages and townships.  Sam Coutts drew our attention to what Curitiba has achieved.  This is a sustainable city built around wide boulevards that provide green corridors and capacity for a variety of transport modes (the city relies heavily on bus transit), green spaces and extensive parks and gardens to manage and contain floods and cater for a population living in relatively high density housing, and efficiently networked services.  Even though Curitiba is bigger than Christchurch (with a population approaching 2,000,000), it offers ideas and inspiration about what can be achieved in a sustainable 21^st century city located  ina dynamic physical environment. 

This is now
I sometime wonder whether as it has grown, urban planning in places like New Zealand, with advanced urbanisation, maturing cities, modest growth, and reasonable levels of wealth and income, has had too little to do.  In seeking out problems to solve it has concentrated increasingly on process and minutiae (in the name of growth management, perhaps?) 

But today Christchurch has real problems, and they are big ones.  It is time to rise above the detail, to cut through undue process, and to act with a combination of vision and conviction.  Now the public and private sectors, citizens and their institutions need to put practical solutions in place.  There do not even appear to be many options to debate.  Going west, the 1974 solution, may just be the one Christchurch has to adopt in 2011.

---

[1]               Heraud B (1966) “The New Towns and London’s Housing Problem” Urban Studies, 2, 8-22

Sustaining the Suburbs

Save our suburbs, save our cities
The proposition is simple, if not overwhelming.  If we want sustainable cities – however you define “sustainable” – we had better put some effort into the quality of suburban life.  We need to get over denigrating suburbs as sprawl.  That simply ducks the issue of where and how most people spend most of their time.  We need to moderate a preoccupation with promoting CBD and big centre lifestyles.  Those are places that people want visit, but not necessarily where they want to live.

Come back Jane, our suburbs need you
It’s fifty years now since Jane Jacobs’ landmark book about saving North American cities from themselves.  She argued against the prevailing push for urban renewal as displacing communities and destroying street life with motorways, car parks, and bland commercial development.  Jacobs’ writing and her activism inspired a resistance credited with saving inner city villages, helping retain the human character of large cities, and inspiring a generation of urban designers and planners. 

There is no doubt that the Jacobs message took hold in New Zealand.  It’s become compelling since the crash of ‘87 slowed down the razing of inner city blocks and marked the beginning of the end of the white collar CBD.  Hanging on to what we've got is one way to stop the hollowing out.

Unfortunately, today’s call for central city mega projects on which to stake a claim to an international presence and the push for large scale CBD residential development on which to stake a claim to environmental stewardship run the risk of reversing the gains to inner city life.  High rise apartments, tracts of high density housing, and grandiose civic plans risk undermining the essence of the central city in the same way as urban renewal and freeways once did.

But that’s not what this posting is about.  The reality is that the bulk of our populations live in the suburbs; the suburbs that are growing the most; and that’s where we need to promote the capacity for people to live fulfilling lives.  That’s where today we need to promote street life and be wary of the threats posed by the new urbanists and their grand plans for intensification.

Most people still live in the suburbs
Its obvious that most people still live a suburban life.  But that doesn't seem to be appreciated by the people who plan our cities today, even as the number of suburban residents keeps growing.

Look at the three metropolitan areas in New Zealand, not big by international standards, but nevertheless reflecting an entrenched trend in the developed world – a move to decentralise.  The numbers say it all. 

Over the last 14 years population growth has been totally dominated by the suburbs.  In Auckland, the inner city accounted for only 6% of a 326,000 person increase.  In other words, 305,000 opted to live in the suburbs and beyond, compared with 21,000 in the central city.  In Christchurch, the CBD accounted for just 1% of population growth and the rest of the inner city 2%.  Wellington, the capital city with a distinctively constrained setting did much better, but a revitalised CBD still accounted for just 10% of population growth. [1]

Population Growth in the Central City: Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, 1996-2010

Source: Statistics New Zealand

And they still favour the outer suburbs

Let’s break this down a little further.  Greater Christchurch Urban Development Strategy Partners (http://www.greaterchristchurch.org.nz/) came up with a plan for consolidating the city.  This includes policies promoting central city living or living around established commercial centres and development contained largely within metropolitan limits.  Well, we can see the warning signs for this sort of thinking from the very small share of recent growth in the inner city.  It seems that the new plan is set to fly in the face of recent experience.   

And if we divide Christchurch's suburbs into three groups (inner, outer, and periphery) we find the decentralising tendency that it is set against is even stronger . [2]

Population Growth in Christchurch Suburbs, 1996-2010

The peripheral suburbs on the city fringes have led growth rates, while the outer suburbs have led absolute growth.  (That’s if we overlook the fact that the small towns in Christchurch’s hinterland left out of this analysis have grown at even faster rates, with the adjoining districts two of the fastest three growth areas in New Zealand).

Does it make sense to stem this pressure?  Not if we want the cities to continue to grow, because the majority of people clearly favour suburban living, and that’s where the greatest capacity for accommodating them lies. 

So while it’s exciting to record rapid growth rates of population gain in our inner cities, policy makers really need to make sure we are doing the right thing by our suburbs. 

Places to live ...
This may mean, for example, ensuring that we don’t sacrifice too many of the green spaces to high density housing: our suburbs also need to breathe.  If we want to lift densities, then terraced units and the occasional low rise apartment may be all we need.  They are probably the most easily achieved forms of intensification in areas where consolidating sites is notoriously difficult and where existing residents will fight to preserve existing character. 

Better still may be judicious development of greenfield sites, where we can boost densities by applying the principles of Smart Growth without destroying what people value about what went before, without overloading existing facilities and infrastructure, creating attractive public and private realms, and potentially enhancing rather than trashing biodiversity, water and air quality.

Places to work ...

We will also need to promote neighbourhood centres to ensure that they can accommodate diverse activities and services, that they are easy to get to and get around, well appointed and vibrant.  They may even become the focus of modest park and ride facilities, the framework around which flexible public transport within and beyond the neighbourhood can best be delivered. 

It may be timely to review what in our planning provisions force people to make regular cross-city journeys to work, and whether this can be changed through more decentralised employment. 

Places to play ...
While local centres are becoming the focus of community and neighbourhood commerce and culture, suburban parks and gardens will also have a role to play.  We need good spaces close to the majority of homes for sport and recreation, and safe local places for families and children to gather.   

We might more actively protect some of the informal spaces in our suburbs, and take a broad view of what constitutes heritage in doing so.  We may have to protect landscapes and structures because they are iconic in local areas, not because we believe they may have national or international significance.  Where they don’t exist, we may even have to create the landmarks, the parks and town belts, and the structures that reinforce local identity and culture.

Strong suburbs for a strong CBD
By allowing more things to happen in the suburbs without overloading them with bland residential development or tracts of mixed use that fall between urban design stools, we have an opportunity to advance the planners’ live-work-play mantra, and to enhance the sustainability of our cities. 

Ultimately, it is the quality of day-to-day life in a city and its capacity to attract and hold skilled and motivated people that will determine its prosperity.  And it is those people and that prosperity that will underwrite the health of the CBD.  Without strong suburbs, we cannot sustain a strong CBD.

---

[1]            For this exercise, the following council areas were counted, Kapiti, Porirua, Upper and Lower Hutt, and Wellington City.

[2]           This classification omits the largely rural Banks Peninsula which is quite separate from the metropolitan area.

Recover, rebuild: Christchurch after the earthquake

Supporting Recovery in Christchurch

Lincoln University did a great job of assembling some leaders in the principles and practice of disaster recovery for its Resilient Futures workshop last week in support of recovery in Christchurch.  And in keeping with one of the themes – the importance of quality and timely communications --  the papers and summary are already posted on the web.

Without being there, it’s hard to judge the tone of discussion and the weight given to the lessons from experience overseas and in New Zealand.  But quick publication of the papers provides useful insights. 

My immediate thoughts follow – but I recommend anyone interested to read the summary and original papers.

Key themes

Some of the papers looked a bit academic, but there is correspondence between what the practitioners and academics have  to say.  It’s good to see theory and practice reinforce each other. 

Here are what I see as the most important threads:

(1)    The common sense but urgent approaches proposed for recovery, and the practicality of  some of the examples of what has been done elsewhere and what can be done in Christchurch;

(2)    The role of central government; there were differences in the detail among speakers, but by and large they see government adopting a leadership and motivational role, providing funding and oversight, especially in the recovery stage;

(3)    Local democracy is a key based on the role of local government and citizen participation, especially in the planning and rebuilding processes, and on the importance of involving local, even localised, communities (“clusters", "villages”).

(4)    The need for existing institutions to adapt to changed circumstances, streamlining decision-making while maintaining transparency;

(5)    The need to ensure that citizen, community, and other interest groups can participate and contribute by way of knowledge, resources, and time;

(6)    The need for speed, which nevertheless brings with it a risk of exacerbating pre-disaster imbalances and inequities between areas and groups; and the trade-off that may be required between speed and deliberation to deliver good long-term outcomes;

(7)    Recognising how easily the temporary can become permanent, and planning accordingly;

(8)    The window of opportunity that might be created for improving land uses and infrastructure in the course of replacement and rebuilding;

(9)    Finding the time to envision the future, to build consensus around architecture and planning options, and to achieve citizen buy-in to proposed solutions;

(10)The need for plans to address and reduce – and be seen to reduce – future risks;

(11)The significance of open space,  the importance of greenways and green-spaces, the likelihood that the city will have to expand, and the notion of an expanded city as an assembly of connected villages;

(It’s reassuring to see I’m not alone in advocating a new approach to spatial planning to limit the damage arising from extreme events, and to facilitate post-disaster recovery.  See my post of March 2 2011).

The challenges

There are potential contradictions in all this.  For example, speed is of the essence where infrastructure and shelter are laid waste, where jobs have evaporated, and communities have been torn apart. But haste should not create a city with parts which are forever temporary, where material gaps among groups widen, or where short-term expediency creates long-term risks. 

Nor should the importance of government leadership limit the capacity of the community at large to participate in rebuilding, to deliberate and debate, and help shape the new Christchurch.

The various speakers confirmed the importance of addressing multiple risks, something fundamental to planning for resilient cities.  If it can address multiple risks and provide outcomes that reduce them, then planning for the new Christchurch will enable “communities and local leaders to make best use of the opportunities the event has created”.

The experience of previous disasters confirmed that public engagement is central to achieving “political stability, community buy-in and support for new initiatives, the identification of workable solutions, and a generally positive recovery that promotes confidence in both the process and the likely end result”.

Differentiating recovery and rebuilding

Perhaps what we need to do if we are to use the wealth of material and insight provided by the Lincoln University initiative, and others like it,  and to work through the contradictions is distinguish between recovery and rebuilding.  Recovery is about restoring as quickly as practical safety, security and shelter, and the structures and infrastructure needed to ensure them.  It demands urgent attention, rapid deployment of resources, and  high level of expediency. 

Rebuilding is a little less urgent and maybe even more challenging.  It is about the way communities will live in the future, how people get on with their lives, their play, their work, and their recreation in a healthy and prosperous urban environment.  Rebuilding requires deliberation, identification of options, and working our way to consensus.  It cannot be rushed.  Nor should it be unnecessarily prolonged.  Ideally, rebuilding will start with community engagement rather than tagging it on through consultation later on, a strategy which risks energy- and morale-sapping disputes about objectives and outcomes.

Getting the governance right

It appears from the papers presented that we know what has to be done: it’s how we set about doing it that is critical to a successful rebuild.

Accelerating and sustaining recovery while laying solid foundations for rebuilding is perhaps the biggest challenge facing those in positions of authority and leadership.  Recognising the differences between them might be a good starting point.

If this challenge is to be met, it is important that the governance structures - who does what and under what authority – are appropriate at the outset.  The creation of a central agency, the Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA), looks like a good start, especially if it focuses on recovery and thereby gives Christchurch City Council the space and capacity it needs to provide leadership in the rebuilding process.  How these two agencies demarcate their roles and work alongside each other will have a major impact on the creation of a resilient and liveable Christchurch.